Google takes on Amazon by cutting cloud service prices

December 03, 2013|Reuters

Google Inc. will lower prices on cloud services as the search giant gears up to take on Amazon.com Inc, International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp in the fast-growing market of Internet services for corporations.

In a Monday blogpost, Google outlined key features and pricing for "Compute Engine," part of a broader service that vies with Amazon's AWS in providing storage and computing power to corporate clients as inhouse datacenters are gradually phased out.

It will lower prices 10 percent on most standard services, and 60 percent on high-end data storage. Google said the service was now "generally available," signaling that it meets internal standards and is ready for a wider rollout.

It is "embarking on a significant multi-billion infrastructure-as-a-service opportunity," analyst ColinSebastian of R.W. Baird wrote. "Google is positioned to become the next large player in cloud services, with a robust platform of application, platform and infrastructure services, competing for an increasing share of the IT spending pie."